


Holland

by WingedAria



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27847330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedAria/pseuds/WingedAria
Summary: I wrote this after I’d finished A Darker Shade of Magic, so spoilers for the end. Also, before I’d gotten the other two books in the series. So this is my take on what might’ve happened after the end of ADSOM. Alternate universe, sharing for those other fans of Holland that I’m certain exist. Small vignette, no plans to continue because for once I’m entirely satisfied with how the author chose to finish his story.
Kudos: 2





	Holland

As Athos’ unwilling accomplice, he’d found the limits of pain. He knew what it took to make a man scream. How long a child would fight and cry before it fell silent. How much pain a woman would accept to protect someone she loved, and conversely, that there was nothing she would not betray to make the pain stop. He knew how much blood a person could lose before consciousness faded. How much more until the heart simply quit. And he knew by contrast the differences among  Antari.  It wasn’t knowledge he was proud of, but pride wasn’t a luxury he’d been afforded since the day he’d lost the bid for the white throne. The sigil carved into his chest and his soul ensured that. 

“It’s really quite hard to kill  _Antari_ , ” he’d told the boy once, a warning from bitter experience. The boy, green and reluctant though he was, had taken the lesson to heart. 

“You’d better kill me,” he’d told the boy moments ago. It wasn’t a wish; the soul bond didn’t allow him to seek his own death. A prayer, then, to gods he didn’t believe were listening. But the boy was. He’d learned well, countering each of Holland’s attacks, but he was so soft that until the very last moment, Holland had doubted he could manage it. 

The chains fell away, clattering to the shattered stones of the street along with the silver clasp of his cloak. The boy gripped the metal rod that jutted from Holland’s chest. He felt every jagged inch as it tore free. The blood followed in a warm flood. Curling in on himself, applying useless pressure to the fatal wound as he fell, he imagined how disappointed Athos and Astrid would be, to see so much of his blood soaking into the ground. All that power, lost. It had been a long time since he smiled, but there was satisfaction in the thought. He let his hands fall. Already the weakness of exsanguination was spreading. His nerveless fingertips trembled. Inside boots that still carried the dust of three worlds, his toes went cold.

As the blood pooled around him, staining the white half-cloak crumpled beneath his body, he clung to consciousness, appreciating each slow heartbeat. For the first time in years there was no compulsion running through him, nothing to fight for control of his body and mind. He was free to die, at least, as himself. Death had never interested the twins beyond its usefulness as a threat. He hoped they would share in the experience sooner rather than later. 

Still, when the boy picked up his body, the remnants of his dignity prickled. It wasn’t enough that he’d murdered him; now the boy carried him back to his own world. Shadows flickered: a mob of magic seekers, bent on taking what was left of him. Let them have it. The world spun and then faded to black. 

He thought it was over; that is, he’d stopped thinking at all. Everything was cold and still, the rumbles of magic like distant thunder, with a scent like rain on herbs. Irrelevant. 

It was the crossing that woke him. The familiar nothingness of the space between worlds, the indescribable shift between here and elsewhere. The smooth stone of the courtyard vanished and he was nowhere. He tried to open his eyes, summoning the last reserves of will, and couldn’t tell if he succeeded. The darkness was absolute. Absolute, and thick with magic in a way none of the worlds he’d visited had ever been. The power twined around him like a needy cat. It tested the faint edges of his consciousness, sniffed with interest at the bloody, destroyed seal on his chest. His thoughts didn’t sharpen, but neither did they fade. Inside a hand he couldn’t see, he felt the smooth shape of the relic of black London. The dawning horror in him was matched by glee from whatever surrounded him. It stopped testing the boundaries of his mind and body, and poured itself through them. There was no time to fight or scream, even if he hadn’t given up both years ago. The magical entity wrapped itself around his mind, restoring a familiar and hated compulsion. He knew the shape of it. He saw it every day, burned into his skin and echoed on the clasp of his cloak. The magic traced it, asked a wordless question. Laughed. 

Raw power seared through the cold numbness of his muscles and nerves, knitting his flesh back together. Every cell raged with it as his blood and the magic mingled. The darkness cleared from his eyes, or drained into them; either way, he and the entity inside him could see the lost city around them. The sky was utterly black, with no stars or clouds to mar its perfection. The ruins of buildings loomed above him. A street formed under his back, as he imagined it, a flawless black river of glass. The creature in his mind purred and stretched, filling the confines of his body. 

“ _Antari_ ,” it whispered. “You and I will have fun together.” 

  
It lifted him to his feet, a perfunctory but not unkind commandeering of his drained muscles. It let go and he swayed, not with exhaustion but with a boiling wave of energy. Holland exhaled hard, the sigh loud as a shout in the emptiness.

The magic rippled like black fog around him as he moved through the city. It kept a light hold on him. It was creature of deep impersonal cruelty, a familiar presence curled in the soul scar. For now, though, it was content to let him wander the empty city. Empty, that is, of human life in any form. Every inch crawled with power, avaricious and seeking. His creature - and its laugh rippled through him at his easy acceptance of its ownership - took no notice of the other magical entities. Perhaps they were one and the same, a single creature spread like a plague through this subsumed London. 

The city wasn’t primitive, as it should have been after a thousand years of human abandonment. Instead, it was a perfect copy of grey, mundane London as he remembered it, if everything were painted black. He tipped his head up to watch the clock strike the hour. The bells tolled; he watched the black metal sway, the clappers strike, but no sound came out. No London had ever been so silent since the first tiny creatures appeared in the seas. 

They are all dead, he thought to himself. I’m the only living thing in all this world. The magic creature snickered. It pulled his hand up, pressed it over the scarred seal on his chest. The realization was slow in coming. He listened to the silence, felt nothing. Not a gust of wind or a skittering insect. Not the sigh of a breath or the rush of a heartbeat. He would’ve collapsed, but the creature held him. 

“Everything here is dead.” He and the magic spoke together, one voice in the stillness. “Which is why you are going to get us out,” the thing in his mind continued. 

“Us?” He asked, flatly. He had no hope the creature meant him. The other shadows rose up around him, through him, cloaking the world in dark mist. Power spiked along his nerves as each particle brushed against him, and he gritted his teeth. If he’d had the barest fraction of this magic in his own world...

“Yes,” the magic hissed. “Yes. Take us there. Use us.”

Holland tested the hold of the magic creature, while it was distracted. It held firm, but he knew the leash could work both ways. 

“I need a token,” he said, a small demand to pave the way for more. The magic swirled like a cyclone around him, and he thought of the final battle against the boy. Or perhaps, not the final battle after all. “Something from the next world, to show me the way.” 

The mist cleared, and he found himself in a junk shop. Here too, everything was black. His bloodstained cloak was a lurid splash where he left it on the floor. It was easy enough to find a token from his world, although in truth he had several with him. Among the tumble of items saturated with magic, so dark as to be indistinguishable from one another, there were a couple of bright spots. Even the creature inside Holland recoiled as he reached for one. He pocketed the small item, and it clicked against the shiny black stone. 

“Now,” the voices in the magic and in his mind chorused. “Now, now, now.”

Holland curled his fingers around the stone, brushing the inscription. He hesitated, as if reluctant. The creature yanked him upright, put a long blade in his hand. The scars on his arm ached with remembrance. He slid the blade into his belt, and dragged the sharp point of his ring across his palm instead. Blood oozed slowly to the pale skin, barely enough of a pool to dip his fingertip in. The mist of magic closed around him, drawn to the hint of life. In his heart, he allowed the smallest flicker of triumph. Like all magic, these creatures could be ruled, controlled. The boy had been too weak to manage, but that did not mean it couldn’t be done. He traced the symbol on the wall, pressed his palm and the hidden token against it, and thought of home. 

“ _As trevars_ ,” he said, drawing on the unending strength of the magical entity. It squirmed uncomfortably, but the gain was worth the price. The wall faded and he stepped through, into the eerie pastels of dawn in his own world. 

The courtyard stones were still marked with bright streaks of his own blood. A pair of citizens licked at it, tongues dark with dirt. The creature and Holland were of one mind. In a moment they were alone, and he wiped the long blade clean on a citizen’s coat. 

“Alone,” the creature said thoughtfully, looking around through Holland’s mismatched eyes. The mists and shadows hadn’t followed them through. “We shall have to remedy that.”

“We?” Asked Holland, of the being inside his skin. He felt its surprise become suspicion, but too late.

“ _As tosal_. ” His voice was firm, certain. The stone warmed beneath his fingers, slick with blood. Black mist bubbled through his skin as the creature tried to escape. It fought his hold, jerking against the leash it had created. His chest burned as though newly branded, and beneath it, his heart raced. He dragged in a breath as the last of the creature left his body. Without looking, he knew the soul seal was gone. Athos and Astrid were dead, and the magic whispered to him from the smooth, dark stone. He traced his fingers over the inscription and looked up at the palace. His palace. 

“Ours,” the magic tried. “Such things we could do together.” 

“Yes,” Holland said, lips curling in an unpleasant smile. “Such fun I will have, with you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This was based on my understanding of As Tosal at the time. Clearly wouldn’t work this way in canon. Hope you enjoyed the AU vignette! 
> 
> The king is coming.


End file.
